Press Releases

'No-Fault' Divorce became law on 6th April 2022

New 'no-fault' divorce laws were enacted on 6th April 2022. On the same day FNF were interviewed by the BBC. The discussion starts at 1:04:10 with our contribution at 1:06:23.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00160c5 (available until 4th May 2022).

At the edges, the new legislation will reduce conflict. However, it is our view that this needs to be just the start of reform of the way family separation works.

The conditions for child arrangements contribute to conflict
- child benefits go to one parent
- so does Child Maintenance even when care is shared
- family courts take too long to resolve things
- allegations of domestic abuse are a pre-condition to receiving legal aid

The motivations that add to attempts at blame and discrediting an ex partner exist in the same way when in comes to children as in relation to divorce. In any case, given that 49% of children are born outside of marriage*, the easing of conflict in divorce does not affect a substantial proportion of parents who are not married.

You can read more about, what is officially called 'The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act (2020)' in the Government's official Press Release: “Blame game” ends as no-fault divorce. 

* Births in England and Wales: summary tables - 2020 dataset - Table 1

16th April 2022

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We are carrying out a survey of separated parents and their experience of financial support arrangements for their children, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) or with arrears relating to the Child Support Agency (CSA) that are now being managed by CMS.

We have had a meeting with the National Audit Office (NAO) who are looking into the value for money of the CMS service to the taxpayer. Your responses will assist us in providing NAO with further, more meaningful feedback of your experiences and will also inform our direct discussions with CMS. We will not share identifying details with NAO or other agencies, but will use your anonymised responses in our reports. We will share the conclusions and analysis of your responses with.

You can skip questions that to not apply to you. Many thanks for doing this, we really appreciate your effort.

The survey can be found here.

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Happy Father's Day 2022

Today we wish all dads a very happy and joyful Father's Day. We know many of you will have been on a terrible journey to be able to mark this special day that is designated to focus on fathers.

For those who are still on that journey and who are unable to see their children today, this is a particularly difficult time. Stay strong and do what you can to stay healthy. Your children will need you that way for when you are re-united. We hear of success stories all the time, even if it takes many years to get there. Celebrate with your parents, do something positive with friends and/or resolve to help us to do something to change the system for the better - to keep people out of courts, to speed up the process and to remove systemic biases throught all areas of fatherhood (see the sample below). Why not resolve to write to your MP, share your story and ask them to make representations to the relevant minister and to meet with us? The same applies if you had a good outcome, but the journey was awful - resolve to help us achieve the changes for all children and parents affected.

Here is a sample of recent stories of dads reunited with their children... even after a long time.

Thomas "Thank you FNF, you helped me when I had no idea what to do and now I see my kids every week."

Carl, says: "The last time I hugged my daughter, she was tiny…… this Easter… we found each other!"

Paul says: "My son and I found each other six years ago when I was 50 and he was 25. I hadn’t known him until then."

Ross: "You can never get those missed years back, but after 15 years of fighting we connected in 2020. And next month she is a bridesmaid at my wedding. To anyone reading NEVER stop fighting"

Michael: "Just happened to me with my son [being reunited] it sure feels nice."

We hear everyday of dads getting positive outcomes, even in within the unfit-for-purpose family justice systems. Hopefully these stories will strengthen your resolve.

Never forget that your children need you now and in the future.

Challenges and Biases Fathers Face

This Father’s Day, as well as sharing the good-news stories, we reflect on some huge disadvantages faced by fathers with many aspects of sex and gender equality not reflecting the diversity of family life today.

The anti-father bias starts at birth
Whereas most fathers now attend the birth of their children, the barriers to their full involvement are high and discriminatory from day one!

The UK has the biggest differential in statutory maternity and paternity leave in the world at 52 to 2 weeks.
• Statutory paternity pay is just £313.32 (£156.66 per week for two weeks).
• For a mother on average income of £28,300 it is £7,956 - a support gap of 96%!
• The UK policy does not offer each parent independent leave and mothers sacrifice theirs in favour of fathers in just 1.6% of cases.
• When Aviva in the UK introduced equal 100% of salary funding for their employees for six months, 99% took it up and 84% for the full six months.

Anti-father bias upon family separation

• Almost all legal aid in private law proceedings goes to mothers, irrespective of the fathers’ income.
• In approximately 90% of cases fathers are classified as 'non-resident parents'.
• The vast majority of fathers in the family justice system do not have access to a lawyer.
• Family court proceedings now take on average almost a year. For those with contested facts almost two years. These are not child-appropriate, or father-appropriate timescales.
• The absence of interim arrangements or early intervention for children means that every year thousands of father’s relationships with their children are irreparably destroyed.
• Some 6,000 applications by fathers for enforcement of orders, made in the interests of children, do not result in enforcement action and lead to the loss of parental relationships.
• 60% of FNF fathers are denied the opportunity to see their children on Father’s Day.
• Even if they spend up to 3½ days a week caring for their children:
  • They do not receive child benefits
  • They are classified as ‘single adults’ by DWP – not even parents, so they do not qualify for any support e.g. housing for their children to stay with them. 
  • They pay child maintenance and don’t receive any, even if they earn substantially less.
• Schools often communicate with mothers and don’t have policies to enable both parents to be registered as contacts when they do not live together.

Three is a public health crisis being caused by the failure of government policy to reflect family life as it is today, the lack of a strategy for separated families and the failure to promote responsible parenting – indeed with outdated policies that have the opposite effect and drive family conflict and the exclusion of fathers from their children’s lives.

19^th June 2022

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The Channel 4 Dispateches documentary 'Torn Apart: Family Courts Uncovered' has received 546 complaints to Ofcom since it was broadcast on 20th July 2021. It  has topped the Ofcom complaints chart for the 2nd week running with 215 complaints in the week to 2nd August and 331 the previous week (their leader charts report on any broadcase with over 50 complaints in a week).

Anybody who hasn't seen it can watch it here. Clearly, it has been divisive as supported in Metro's article here.

The Channel 4 news release promoting this documentary tells us that their (self-selected) survey received responses from 4,000 people - 2,776 mothers and 1,147 fathers. The responses suggested that:-

• 70% of mums and dads were unhappy with the outcome
• Half of parents considered the judge to be hostile to them
• Court proceedings averaged 18 months and in 10% of cases over 5 years
• The average cost of proceedings was £13,000 with 5% saying they spent over £100,000
[Please note that these simple averages conceal that many will have been litigants in person or qualified for legal aid (due to income levels and alleged domestic abuse), so in reality those who had to pay for themselves spent far more. We carried out a survey a few years ago and the average figure for those using lawyers was almost double the figure of the C4 Dispatches respondents.]

What these facts tells us is that there is a public heath emergency that demands urgent attention.

1. Family courts are not fit-for purpose.
2. The adversarial nature of family courts fuels conflict on the embers of family relationships when emotions are already heightened.
3. Family courts provide no actual support to parents or children.
4. Family courts are almost always the wrong place to resolve private family separation disputes.
5. In most cases what is needed is education and support for separating parents and early interventions to keep them out of court whenever possible.
6. Where court is unavoidable, the current system must be adapted to be on a child-appropriate timescale - weeks not months and years, and again to consider referring parents back to appropriate support services.
7. Failure to respond in a timely way contributes to harm experienced by children.

Many of these points were needlessly lost. With a little more care in case selection and choice of ‘experts’, balanced representation of both mothers and fathers and acknowledgment of the psychological harm to children that of inapropriate post-separation parenting and and  the documentary could have galvanised the majority of litigants and lawyers around these and delivered a well-supported case to the Government for reform. It was a missed opportunity.  important issues instead that we could have agreed upon. Instead, as social media comments and many complaints to Ofcom (the broadcast regulater) have shown. 

Note: The job of the communications regulator Ofcom is help to make sure people across the UK are satisfied with what they see and hear on TV and radio, and that programmes reflect the audiences they serve. Anyone who feelst that this has not happened may contact them directly.

 6th August 2021

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Parental Alienation Under Covid-19

Dr Ben Hine's team at the University of West London, are carrying out an academic study into parental alienation and disruption of parental relationships during Covid-19. If you have not seen this on our social media and it affected you, then please do it now and help with the understanding of this phenomenon - it should take 10-20 minutes.

Click here or on the image below for details.

19^th June 2022

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